While drafting the closing part to this summary piece, a few loose ends struck me as needing a separate post. Especially in light of a runner in the UK having recently been caught cheating and subsequently stripped of his bronze medal. So I ask that you bear with me through one more post before closing arguments begin.

First up – our very own Brian swam through a big bowl of piping hot conservative soup over on Facebook to ask the $64,000 question of the good people at the Storm Lake Running Club: How can you be sure Sarah ran the entire race…

So I wrote a couple of things down.

Cathy Otto (1) remembers Sarah starting next to her, not because she knew it was Sarah Palin, but because she saw a woman struggling to remove a top shirt that had been pinned by the numbers bib. Cathy Otto placed ninth in her age group (40-49) in the mixed 5k run with a time of 55:58.85 It is entirely possible she saw Sarah at the very start of the race but it’s odd to note that while Sarah was seen ‘struggling’ with the shirt, she ended up keeping it on – as a later photo will confirm. And really, all this does is reinforce the knowledge that Sarah was with the wrong pack, on the wrong side of the meridian at the start of the race.

Becca Danielle (2) who has just gone out of her way to explain why Palin might not have been noticed by the other runners, makes an odd response to a comment by someone named Jean. It’s odd because no comment by anyone named Jean appears in the thread. I’m guessing whoever it was made a remark the club didn’t like and the comment was then removed. We may never know. But we can make educated guesses.

Storm Lake Running Club (3) finally comments on the queries made by those wanting information regarding Sarah’s alleged run. It’s piss-weak however and doesn’t actually address the concerns. To say that a member of the club’s planning committee (a friend of Sarah’s perhaps?) who participated in the half marathon relay claims to have been neck and neck with Sarah throughout the first half of the race doesn’t even begin to resolve the issues presented by the photos.

Did this relay runner also begin at the back of the 5k runners on the wrong side of the meridian at the beginning? What defines the first half of the race? Half the distance of said runner’s leg of the race would be 3.5 miles – or did he or she mean neck and neck until the 7 mile mark where the runner hands off the baton? The biggest problem with this statement is the photo of Sarah still with the 5k runners after the other runners have clearly pulled ahead leaving her with the slower 5k runners – yet still running fast enough to take a silver medal at the end. Are there photos of Sarah running with this relay runner? Are there photos of the relay runner? They would be telling.

The Storm Lake club has a lot to lose by having a cheat exposed on their watch. Just look what this poor club had to deal with in the UK:

(Editor’s note: Though we both caught this news at the same time I’m happy to give the h/t to the very nice reader who took the time to post a link about this in the comments just as soon as he or she drops me a note telling me who he or she is because I’ve totally flaked on trying to find the right set of comments and now I feel really awful!)

And to the naysayers who keep saying ‘nobody cheats in these races’ and that I’m barking up the wrong tree all I can say is – bite me.

Finally, this has bothered me. I can’t know the time distance between photos because none are time-stamped. But. We can place the Gretawire photo at the very onset of the race and at the back end of the curving meridian which separates the 5k racers from the half marathon runners – because in the Gretawire photo Sarah is just now jutting ahead of the pack of walkers – who cannot possibly keep pace with the runners anywhere else in the race.

So when we agree this photo is done at the very beginning, the changing curb in the background which should be a solid concrete curve edging what looks to be a meridian filled with redwood chips, makes no sense at all.

And somewhere beyond this meridian – the meridian where the camera captures Sarah along with our beloved Beard Dude and Red Bandana Guy – somewhere beyond the meridian and some 19-20 photos later Sarah (who ran fast enough to win the silver medal) is – well – have a look for yourself:

Sarah will be on the 5k side of the meridian which is definitely curved. She will not come from behind the walker pack for another 5 to 10 photos. In the meantime the following is taken by an as-yet-to-be-named photographer and submitted to Gretawire at Fox News:

Sarah juts ahead of the walkers and is seen flanking the nice man we named Beard Dude (grey beard, white shirt with side stripe, dark shorts) on the opposite side of the street). They are seen in this same almost-parallel positioning in this next shot, (although camera angle notwithstanding, she appears to be pulling slightly ahead of Beard Dude here) taken just 9-10 photos after the club photo (#2469 above):

And the point of this is now apparent in this next shot – another 10 photos or so later – when even though we’ve seen Sarah jutting ahead of the walkers and slower 5k runners and leaving Beard Dude and Red Bandana Guy (he’s in the photo just ahead of this one #2476) behind – and still wearing the red jumper over the grey tee and wide white headband, how should we explain what the camera saw in #2488?

And now you really have to ask yourself two questions:

1- If sarah spent so much time at the back of the 5k pack with the slower runners, how did she manage to clock 13 consecutive 8 min miles to win second place in her age group and…

2- If Sarah is still wearing the red jumper after pulling away from the opening starting area – how on earth did Todd know where to retrieve it on the track so he could be holding it for her at the finish line? Because Sarah doesn’t have it when she crosses the finish line and he’s photographed near the chute holding it all neatly rolled up – like the scam they just pulled off.

An episode of the TV series West Wing has Pres. Bartlet confronting his staff with the complex problem of getting two enemy leaders to talk peace rather than continue warring. The president said “I want to hear your ideas – all of them – no idea is too stupid.”

What’s wrong here?

[Click all images to enlarge. Use browser toolbar view/zoom to make even larger]

On Sunday 04 September 2011 after the photo came out on Gretawire (above left), some of us rolled our eyes at the prospect of Sarah actually finishing a whole race. I mean it’s not like she has a great track record for finishing what she starts. On the Monday following, after a few flippant comments had flown about the blogosphere, Joe McGinniss posted the photo of Sarah crossing the finish line (above right), a screenshot of her official score and a scathing reprimand to all of us who (according to Joe) were behaving like mean girls in light of Sarah’s obvious athletic achievement. Her score was recorded. She therefore finished the race and earned the medal. Case closed. Move along children…

The scolding, coming from a man who was only days away from releasing the most brutal of expose`s yet to be published about this very same woman struck me as – well, weird. Joe had made many mean-girl statements about Sarah on his blog. Still – here was a brilliant author taking us to task so out of respect I looked again.

Alas, as many times as I looked at the photo in his post and then at the Gretawire photo, trying hard to see the validity he was seeing all I saw was the polished edges of a scam.

Who runs 13 miles in under two hours and leisurely walks across the finish line?

How does a person sweat all over their shoulders and upper chest without having a droplet around their neck, hairline, face, underarms, breasts?

Clearly that huge splash on Sarah’s shoulders had to be water. But what, if one is not over-heated and sweating, would necessitate the need to be cooled off via drenching?

How does a woman run 13 miles in full face and eye makeup and not have one iota of mascara dribbling down her cheeks?

Why weren’t Sarah’s cheeks flushed and skin mottled?

Why wasn’t Sarah doubled over trying to catch her breath?

How does any large-breasted woman run 13 miles without confining her girls in a proper sports bra?

Nobody is that great an athlete thought I…

This image also emerged on that Monday from one of the organiser’s Flickr accounts. It was taken just after the medals were awarded, not long after Sarah crossed the finish line. This particular photo did Laura Novak’s head in because of Sarah’s makeup which looks freshly applied.

To quote Laura: For all the strange phoniness about this story, it’s the make-up plastered on the face at the end that kills me.

Laura has personally run marathons and won medals. She has an entirely different take on what transpires before, during and after crossing a finish line. Laura was instrumental in helping a few of us iron out some of the finer points of marathon protocol. I’ve linked to the article itself (above). It’s a lovely read and her writing is so detailed it had me longing for my city of birth.

Sarah’s hair looks bone dry and there’s not one hair stuck to her neck at the hairline. Even her bangs – that were matted and damp less than a month earlier at the Iowa State Fair after doing nothing more than walking around talking to people – are completely dry.

The photo would later cause a guest named Mel to roll her eyes as she noted the water splash in this shot, taken after the one crossing the finish line, appears to have still more water applied to the tee. Why?

Many of the oddities which initially caught my attention in comparing the Gretawire photo to the photo of Sarah casually strolling across the finish line were proved early on to be either outright off-pudding on my part or completely inconsequential. On the other hand each wrong turn exposed something new to explore – what is it they say about innovations and accidents? Being wrong can be just as fruitful as being right. I embraced my wronghood and soldiered on.

My friend Gryphen, author of The Immoral Minority, poked fun at the Gretawire photo as well but instead of writing his opinions in a post, simply pointed to my post from his, linking his very busy blog to my tiny, little, quiet one. It overwhelmingly registered almost a year’s worth of traffic in 8 days. For me the experience was not unlike riding out a San Francisco earthquake of respectable size, but without my Aunt Ellen’s treasured China plates falling off the wall. It was exhilarating, terrifying and a miracle that I didn’t get fired because I got no work done at all for more than a week. And at the end of the day I got to know a lot of good people and I’m hopeful there were sturdy friendships made during the journey.

“Sarah leapt from the back of the pack like a gazelle with a lion on her ass” –OzMud

Taking the advice from the West Wing writers, I asked my guests to take risks. To share every thought no matter how silly or foolish it might sound because the whole point of understanding Sarah Palin is to understand those three principles set down by her recent biographers Frank Bailey and Geoffrey Dunn.

In Sarah’s world:
1. It is easier to lie than to tell the truth.
2. No lie is too outrageous.
3. Sarah is utterly obsessed with her public image and would do anything to protect it.

In order to uncover the truth about Sarah Palin we need always to think outside the norm, to embrace the most outlandish of outrageous ideas and to not be afraid of being wrong in the process. Something was amiss with these photos. No idea would be too stupid to not discuss.

The following image is a map of the top 25 issues noted by the 184 commenters and myself who took part in this exercise over the course of those eight days. There were many, many more observations made and noted, but these seemed the most frequently visited.

Pet names evolved describing the other runners in the photo to facilitate discussion as none of us knew them personally. In the end we jointly grew rather fond of them all and found most of the nicknames to be rather endearing.

Below the map is an index of each noted image flaw. Factual or probable explanations for them appear in [purple brackets]. No info in [purple] means we have yet to agree on a reasonable explanation other than – she cheated and the image is photo-shopped.

This is the result of our 8-day photo-opsy:

1. Feet appear to be floating with no thought given to the fact Sarah is about to slam her foot down partially on lawn and partially on concrete curb.

1. Odd pixelation pattern on left side of toe. [Probable cause: image compression]

3. White smudge on pants below left knee appears on right leg at finish line. [Smudge is actually a brand name which is on both legs but gets caught up when fabric rolls]

4. Appearance of dent in black pants (foreground) at white shoe (background). [Possible cause: compression of image. I am still not convinced. It looks to me like the common mistake in photo-shopping of trimming away too many pixels on the overlaid image.]

5. Was the red sleeve deliberately trimmed away to show bib number? (Where did the red jumper go? Has the bib number been enhanced?) [Red jumper held by Todd at finish line – no conclusion on the other]

6. Is this a collar to a third jumper? [Believe it’s the neckline of the grey tee pulled up for some odd reason]

7. Why the over-sized headband? Where did it go? [Band probably a throw-away.]

8. Toes of two white shoes behind the leg not one – so can’t belong to the lady in khaki shorts. Someone else?

16. [Bunny Hop Lady] Running in place? At this angle wouldn’t she fall?

17. Why is she the only one looking at the camera?

18. [Red Bandana Guy] Not his ponytail – neck is perfectly shaved and hair is short-short.

19. [Boofy hair] Whose hair is this? (We decided it was probably not Ponytail girl as depicted in the 7th post). But where is the runner’s body?

20. Runner missing lower buttocks and entire right leg from upper thigh to foot. Is left leg too small for this big man?

21. Rounded, bevelled curb appears.

22. Double foot? Is one shoe stepping on top of second shoe?

23. Runner missing foot. [It’s possible his ankle and large foot are hidden perfectly by the other runner’s thigh but not many of us are buying that.]

24. [Red Bandana Guy] hovering like Sarah above the ground.

25. Why the short distance between walkers still in their close pack and runners spread out and in full sprint?

Plausible explanations have been expressed for 7 of the 25 oddities. #9 through #14 have also been attributed (by more than one commenter) to the result of compressing a larger image – but – as many of us have reservations about the seam left behind and as I’ve never seen a compression leave that long a straight ‘seam’ I’ve chosen to leave all the idiosyncrasies they proffer in the unresolved pile.

Even if there were only a few unresolved details in this photo left to mull over and wax philosophic on, I fail to see how any rational-thinking person could look at the sheer preponderance of problems this photo presents and still ask us to simply ignore them all and move along…

I have great respect for those educated professionals who have taken the time to stop by my blog and offer the reasons they disagree with this project – and even those who have on other blogs discarded my observations as stuff and nonsense and a distraction from real issues of the day. That said, at the end of the day I’m obliged to follow my instincts, not those of someone else. And the bottom line for me is – it’s entirely possible these photos can prove Sarah Palin faked this race subsequently cheating two real, hard-working, tax-paying Americans from receiving medals they honestly earned.

If undressing that sort of public fraud is distracting – we clearly live in two different worlds.

If nothing else, doubting-bat-thomases riddle me this: Why does Sarah appear more relaxed and rested in the shot of her crossing the finish line than in the shot of her taking off in the purported first few metres of the race? Because the face of the lady in the red jumper is so distorted from what looks to be a jaw-clenched, struggled expression, (one that is normally associated with extreme physical exertion), that many of us assumed it was a different person altogether.

Yet we would be wrong. Both shots are of Sarah and just one hour and forty-six minutes after her face is twisted from having physically run only a few metres we find our darling of the tight abs set strolling effortlessly across the finish line of a 13 mile race, powder dry, even-breathed and quipping “Boy that was fun!”.

How did the eye witness at the finish line describe her again? Oh yes – it was as if she’d only just run around the block a few times…

[Click following images to enlarge then use view/zoom or [ctrl+] to enlarge more]

Palin, Red Bandana Guy and Beard Dude seem to be almost in the same horizontal row of runners.

So – why were there not more of these runners in the Gretawire photo?

Also too and… note the style of curb on the meridian. This is the same meridian that is the backdrop for the Gretawire photo and yet – in that photo the curb changes from beveled to dirt edge to squared to beveled – purportedly on this same stretch of center raised meridian in a distance of what appears to be no more than two or three metres.

And now that Irishgirl has pointed out where Red Bandana Guy and Beard Dude are in relation to Palin in this early leg of the race it humbles me to see how agile Red Bandana Guy must be to have literally run sideways in order to leave the middle of the pack to get into this shot with Our Lady of The Divine Sneakers.

Don’t forget boys and girls – This photo had to be taken first – because it shows Sarah just as she pulls ahead of the little old lady walkers – which means not only does it look like Red Bandana Guy had to suddenly run sideways, but also too backwards just a skootch… and I’m guessing a time machine was somehow involved.

Mr. Sulu – get us out of here! Warp Speed!

================== Update! ==================

Thought I’d shift this from comments as it may be that others also too had difficulty understanding the significance of these photos or seeing what Irishgirl saw in them: